


Flashing Before

by were_lemur



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Awesome Donna Noble, Beta What Beta?, Death from Old Age, Donna dies from a heart attack at about 100 years old, Gen, My Feels Let Me Show You Them, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 20:54:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/were_lemur/pseuds/were_lemur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As her life ends, Donna remembers her time with the Doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flashing Before

**Author's Note:**

> trulytim on tumblr was looking for "I really want a fic where she remembers everything and spends the last few moments of her life remembering all the good times with the doctor." This sort of fell out of my brain.

It hurts, but then it always hurts now, and Gramps used to say that growing old wasn't for wimps (and God, it's been almost sixty years since she lost him, and Dad longer than that, more than forty for Mum and not quite seven for Shaun, but she's never stopped missing them but as pain squeezes her heart, she supposes she won't miss them anymore ... )

"Gran?" Katie's voice is worried. "I've called 9-9-9, the ambulance is on its way ... "

"I always wanted to die at home," she says, but suddenly she knows that's not true, and she sees him, as clearly as if he was sitting in the chair by her bed, that grin of his on his face and the memories come flooding back, some beautiful, some terrible, but all of them incredible. For a moment, anger washes over him for taking something from her, something so precious, but then she thinks of what Katie and Colin had told her, just last week; that she was going to be a great-grandmother. And she can't regret the life she made for herself, and her family, and she knows that there's no time to waste on being angry, and she lets the memories fill her:

Pompeii burning.

_I'm waving at fat!_

The terrifying, exhilarating inrush of knowledge as her mind inexplicably joined with his.

The wonder of staring at alien stars for the first time. _There's Earth,_ he'd said, pointing; _Weeeeell, you can't see it with a naked eye, but if you'd been a Kandorian, with telescopic vision ..._

Agatha Christie. She'd met _Agatha Christie_ ; she grins at the memory, and looks over at the shelf full of what she realizes only now are her old friend's books. And the thought of old friends brings back the gathering in the TARDIS, of seeing Martha again, and Rose, who she'd met in an alternate universe, and that Captain Jack ... and she'd met Sarah Jane Smith, whose articles her Gramps had faithfully read; she'd teased him, sometimes, that he'd had a bit of a crush on her. She wished she could have told him about meeting her.

If there was an afterlife, she supposed she'd be telling him quite soon. Another wave of pain left her gasping, and she was vaguely aware of Katie leaning in murmuring something reassuring. But her memories were so much more real: 

The Library, every book ever written on its shelves, and horror in its shadows, but a living dream at its heart. She wondered what River Song was getting up to.

The Ood, with their beautiful, heartbreaking song, and their world of ice.

The Empress of the Racnoss, ancient and terrifying, and she won't let herself think of Lance, so she thinks instead of the birth of the solar system, the Earth just beginning to coalesce.

Far away, she hears sirens, but in her own mind they're drowned out by the sound of the TARDIS materializing. She imagines the door opening, the Doctor leaning out, grinning his ridiculous grin.

Katie doesn't see her rise from her bed, leaving her body behind. She takes the Doctor's outstretched hand.

"Hello, Donna," he says, and leads her into the TARDIS.


End file.
